Suuns exercise restraint while creating a bright future

Erik Leijon, Special to THE GAZETTE03.03.2013

The Montreal-based post-rock group Suuns — including Joseph Yarmush, left, Liam O’Neill and Ben Shemie — reins itself in where other musicians might indulge in a crescendo. The band “was an exercise in restraint from the very beginning,” says keyboardist/bassist Max Henry (not pictured).

MONTREAL - Suuns keyboardist/bassist Max Henry never had the opportunity to see Images du Futur, the Montreal art exhibition that inspired the name of his band’s second album. Only one member of the local post-rock quartet — vocalist, guitarist and lone born-and-bred Montrealer Ben Shemie — managed to catch a glimpse of Ginette Major and Hervé Fischer’s not-so-prescient look at what might be popular in the future.

“I wouldn’t say one Images du Futur directly informed the other,” Henry explains. “It’s more that any reference to Montreal we include usually comes from Ben’s nostalgic associations with the city. He has vague memories of having visited (the exhibition), and we felt the name was appropriate to the music we were making.”

Based on a mixture of hazy recollections and research (considerable time was spent finding the right photo to include in the album’s liner notes), the band concluded the Images du Futur exhibition, which ran intermittently from 1986 to 1996 in the Old Port, could be considered Montreal’s answer to the Epcot Center, or at least our 1980s/’90s perception of modernity. Similarly, the group’s second full-length isn’t exactly in lockstep with current trends: Images du Futur the album drones uncomfortably and is at times unbearably tense, with the band forcing itself to stay restrained where another collection of rockers might reach for an overblown chorus or crescendo.

“When the band started, it was about instilling fear and playing with darker emotions, particularly for our music to be darker than the prevailing esthetic in indie rock at the time,” says Henry. “That element is still there, but now we’re exploring the different sides of what that could mean, including creating a hypnotic effect.”

Suuns (pronounced “soons”) — which also includes drummer Liam O’Neill and guitarist/bassist Joseph Yarmush — formed under the name Zeroes four years ago, and was conceived as a rock group even though Henry, O’Neill and Shemie were studying jazz at McGill. Their rebellion against bombast was not directed at the often audacious style of music they had chosen to adopt.

“With Zeroes and Suuns, it was an exercise in restraint from the very beginning,” says Henry. “Being a jazz band wasn’t even a consideration. We knew we would be a rock band, and in a way the laconic restraint of the music was a reaction to the decadence you can get away with in jazz.”

The band released its first EP, titled Zeroes, in 2010 (by which point the name had changed to Suuns), and followed it up later that year with the full-length Zeroes QC. Like its predecessor, Images du Futur was recorded quickly — completed in two weeks last summer, with the student protests as an abstract backdrop — and although Henry feels the band’s progression has been gradual, the album goes a long way toward solidifying Suuns’ mastery of being loud and captivating in a deliberate, austere way.

All four members are essential to the songwriting process, but it’s Shemie who introduces the original skeletal arrangements, which he sends to the others by email. Each member then creates their individual parts before they congregate at their jam space to formulate the final version of a song.

Although Suuns are shying away from rock mores by refusing to liven up, Henry says their dedication to holding back isn’t a protest against convention.

“We happen to waste a lot of energy thinking,” Henry explains. “I think there’s something to be said about showing up to a gig, plugging in your instruments and just playing. It does take a certain temperament to be restrained, but I don’t know what that temperament is: it’s partially diffidence, partially arrogance.”

Images du Futur is released on Tuesday, March 5. Suuns perform April 4 at La Sala Rossa, 4848 St. Laurent Blvd.; tickets cost $10 at blueskiesturnblack.com. Suuns also open for We Are Wolves March 12 at Salle André Mathieu, 475 de l’Avenir Blvd. in Laval; tickets cost $18.50 at scene1425.com.

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